Does anyone else find themselves ignoring niggling health issues not to have to take time off work?

[Stupidmeitseems]

I work in a team of about 10 and over the last year or so there has been a bit of a domino effect of people being off long term sick / reducing hours.
it started with a colleague being off for 10 weeks with a bad back then taking 4 months to do a VERRRYYYY slow phased return. Another colleague clocked this and went off sick with migraine, self referred to occ health (who is a sweetie and takes everyone at face value) and then got herself a fortnight off to rest and a reduced working day to be able to cope with the fact she was feeling run down.
Third colleague then decided that she was anxious so self referred to occ health and agreed a reduced working week to ‘see how things go’ for a while.
Another colleague is now announcing daily that she has stomach pains And we are just waiting for her to go to the nurse / get told to go home and rest etc.
All the while there’s myself and another team member who are in the throes of menopause with all the associated issues just struggling on, too loyal and caring about the company to just say sod it and join em.
People seem far too quick to be happy to be off work these days, does this happen in other workplaces? I should add these people are having nail / hair appointments, happily going shopping etc whilst they are off. We are the dull ones for not doing the same I think!

I ignore health niggles because I can't cope with the stress of trying to get a GP appointment and then trying to get taken seriously.

Is there any recognition of your devotion to the company? Most are not very loyal to their staff.

It dues sound as though your colleagues MIGHT be taking the piss. The company or their manager should be on top of it. Usually the process of being off sick is the punishment - getting fit notes, keeping in touch calls, occupational health forms and not posting your day out bungy jumping on Facebook.

No recognition, just more work to pick up as one by one the others decide to take a couple of months / weeks easy way out.

A lot of the problem is that the occ health nurse is too nice, she has no idea that some people will try it on and takes everyone at face value. It’s becoming obvious to people that if you self refer to her (which is fine to do) she’ll happily tell you to go home until you’re 100%. And as long as you go to see her once a month and tell her you’re not really better you’ll get another lot of time off. As she’s told you to go then it doesn’t count as sick apparently. The mind boggles.

Yes we get this where we work, we've had several people off for months at a time, then come back just before the 6 months sick pay runs out! Or we have people that get signed off for weeks at a time throughout the year, some do it during half terms so they don't have to take annual leave to look after their kids! Unfortunately there is nothing you can do about it.

Do people not actually have to seek a diagnosis/sick line via their GP? I have a permanent health condition so have been dealt with by occ health with regard to that, but if I'm off sick I still need to get signed off by my GP.

It all sounds a bit ad hoc, do you have a proper HR dept? At my work (massive, public sector) there are triggers you hit for sickness and attendance is managed quite robustly. That said, if people are sick with random things there is not much that can actually be done.